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Comment by woliveirajr | Hacker News Reader

As always, the problem is all those old earphones, headphones, and so on. The only chance of such thing prospering is if all those main cellphones come with earphones using such connection.

In computers, on the other hand, I'd love to have a phone with USB connector instead of the 3.5mm. That way I could get rid of those noise (caused by motherboard consuming power in variables ways), without using my USB-soundboard.

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How else is Beats going to sell you the same overpriced headphones for the second time in three years? Gotta think about those gold plated yachts and CEO salaries. Won't somebody think of the executives!

Please don't post these comments here. It's not relevant to tech discussion.

I'll agree the parent comment is not a good one, but Hacker News is absolutely a place to talk about things like CEO compensation. It is not a tech-only venue.

I think analyzing the reasons why a technological change is proposed is directly on point. Yes, there are other reasons as well, but the benefit of obsoleting 50 years of headphones is a fantastic way to gouge the consumer.

oh yes it is relevant to discussion, much more than your comment for example

The proposal sends analog audio out on the auxiliary pins, so adapters will be passive and dirt cheap.

Presumably this also means it won't fix the issues of noise mentioned in the parent comment.

You've got analog on the aux pins and digital on the main pins. The digital isn't active unless selected, so it doesn't induce onto the analog. Best of both worlds. (except for the adapter required part).

You'd still have to worry about the power lines, and it'd be nice to have audio while charging.

In theory. Once it's programmable, music companies can decide song-x shouldn't play over analog, and we could do little about that.

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